At the peak of political success Toni Brunner draws a line. The SVP party president today announced at the meeting of party cadres to express his position on the end of his tenure. This ends on 23 April.

Brunner would in the future concentrate again more on his work in parliament, writes the SVP in a statement. In addition, the farmer plans to participate again more in the domestic court.

Brunner has been president of the SVP since 2008. Previously, he spent eight years vice-president of the party.

The probable successor of Brunner is already known. The party leadership has proposed fellow parliamentarian Albert Rösti, who was responsible for the election campaign last year.

General Secretary Martin Baltisser resigns along with Toni Brunner. Baltisser will "take on a new professional challenge in the private sector," wrote the party.

In addition to the personnel changes, further changes in the party leadership will come in the spring. A working group headed by Brunner had submitted a proposal regarding composition of the party leadership in the coming term of office to the Assembly of Delegates. The SVP justifies this with the "increased demands" to the party since the election of Guy Parmelin as the second SVP Federal Councillor.

With the departure of Toni Brunner now three governing parties will elect a new president in April. In December, the FDP and CVP presidents, Philipp Müller and Christophe Darbellay, announced their resignations.

Might explain Brunner's resignation if in future he would be outside of Blocher's protective umbrella.

Blocher says he wants to make way for the "New Generation"!
Maybe he wants to concentrate on his other political campaigns but hard to see how these can be effective if Blocher cannot bring the SVP to the party?

Might explain Brunner's resignation if in future he would be outside of Blocher's protective umbrella.

Blocher says he wants to make way for the "New Generation"!
Maybe he wants to concentrate on his other political campaigns but hard to see how these can be effective if Blocher cannot bring the SVP to the party?

Giving up his office is not the same as relinquishing all influence over the party.

I don't think so:
As vice president you're part of the innermost circle that decides on the (most all) crucial things. As Chief XYZ you're responsible for topic XYZ but no longer involved with anything outside that (in theory at least).

Edit, forgot to add:
Check out the descriptions of the various bodies(word?) within the SVP on svp.ch.

I don't think so:
As vice president you're part of the innermost circle that decides on the (most all) crucial things. As Chief XYZ you're responsible for topic XYZ but no longer involved with anything outside that (in theory at least).

Edit, forgot to add:
Check out the descriptions of the various bodies(word?) within the SVP on svp.ch.

Does not seem to be like quite that.

Both Blocher and Frey are in the new eight-member party Steering Committee that was newly created as a quasi-executive body; this seems to be taking over the responsibilities from the former group of seven Vice presidents.

Both Koppler and Blocher's daughter have senior roles but not clear to me how they fit into this structure; probably also in this committee? There are still 30 people classed as "party leadership" so plenty of room for confusion and overlapping roles.
No longer in the party leadership, the SVP ladies leader and the SVP "seniors" - not sure what the message is here!

Judith Uebersax has not taken this change well, she claims nobody told her - she read about it in the newspapers! She has resigned from the SVP and may join another party; possibly CVP. She claimed if they continue to deal with people like this then they will not last long

So far no public comment from Luzi Stamm, rumour has it he was also not excited by the change.

Claude-Alain Voiblet says he was expecting this after his failure to be re-elected last October.

Sources; most Swiss newspapers carrying this story but with slightly different versions

Edit; do not know if Natalie Rickli gets anything out of this; she would be a more attractive choice than the Grand Ayatollahs daughter

Edit; there is an article on the SVP web site about this; lacks details on the defintion of responsibilities of the different groups. All in German; strangely they do not do English! here

I was relying on the svp.ch website and the descriptons of their organs for my previous post. However they are two years old so don't reflect the changed setup. Makes sense considering it probably needs to be accepted by the Delegiertenversammlung, so they're not definitive yet. However relying on them after a major reorganisation obviously doesn't work, you're right on that.